Chapter 20
The next few weeks are a blur.
There are trainers I like, including Teresa and Franco.
There are moments that are hard, usually those involving Ivana and Evangeline.
My scenes with Dominika are not the most difficult for her by far, so after a few days of practice, I see her very little. She has many much more technical scenes with fairies and the Prince and her solos.
I spend a lot of time with the artistic director, an older lady named Barb who danced for the New York City Ballet for decades. She’s funny and warm, but very exacting. I probably would have liked her if she wasn’t sharply criticizing my dance four hours a day.
Much of the time I’m with Barb and the fairies, learning the opening scene where I place a curse on the baby princess. It’s a long scene with many parts, and tons of cast members come in and out, from the king and queen to the nurse and baby, fairies and corps dancers male and female. It’s crazy and only one of the studios is large enough to hold us all.
Dancers line the walls, sitting on the floor when it’s not their turn to come in. A funny young man in a newsboy cap plays the piano in the corner. Sometimes when we blow a scene or Barb stops us in irritation, he’ll play a silly line to go along with her mood. A villain’s entrance. The theme to Jaws.
Barb often cuts him annoyed looks, but he’s impervious to her disapproval.
The only breaks in the day are lunch, costume fittings, and physical therapy to make sure we are not stressing our bones or joints. I dance less than many of the ballerinas. The corps dancers are particularly stressed. Carla and Fiona and Andrew are constantly complaining about fatigue.
Blitz and I talk via FaceTime every night. He’s filling his days with the two male gymnasts at Jenica’s. He is pretty sure between the aerial silks and the trampoline acrobatics he’s learning, he could run away with a circus.
“I’m willing to work for peanuts,” he says, kicked back on our sofa.
I look greedily at him, at the house behind him. It all feels so far away.
“I’m not sure a ballerina can support your lifestyle,” I say.
“Oh, you didn’t see the cut I just made for you on the DVD,” he says. “You’re on the cover, you’re a costar. Forget that no-name Prince. He doesn’t even show up for half of it.”
I shake my head. Blitz is good to have on my side.
I miss him, but my exhaustion is so complete that I think about it a lot less than I expected. My friendships with Carla, Fiona, and Andrew are helpful in the scenes where we are together. It’s nice to have someone to sit by and chat with when I’m not dancing.
I haven’t seen Weeza the entire time we’ve been here, other than glimpses at breakfast. She’s obviously not a corps dancer, or she would be in the curse scene with the rest of us. Evangeline must have moved her up to a role in Act 3, the wedding. I’m not in that one at all, so it makes sense we haven’t crossed paths.
During the fourth week, a new girl arrives in rehearsals and introduces herself to me. She says she is my understudy, and she will be doing my role during some rehearsals in case I can’t perform.
More understudies appear in the next few days, including one for Dominika and the Prince.
I finally see Weeza during costume fittings about two weeks before opening night. The head seamstress is fitting a piece of fur to her bodice. She must be White Cat.
I bite back a giggle at the thought of the girl who always wears black suddenly going out in white. She spots me and carefully looks away. It’s strange that she has some grudge against me, even now. I guess she lumps me in the sellouts and is even more incensed that I got the part she wanted for herself.
Still, I try to talk to her.
“I’ve heard White Cat is a really fun role,” I say.
She shrugs. “It’s short.”
“Something you can build on for the next opportunity,” I say, remembering what Juliet told me.
Weeza shrugs again, so I give up on having a conversation.
My costume is glorious. Black and glittery, it’s a short traditional tutu covered in a long flowing overdress. For the opening scene, I wear it all, large and imposing and dark as night. Then, when I disguise myself as a peasant to present the hidden spindle to Aurora, I wear a light-colored cape over only the smaller tutu, to allow for our push-pull of a dance.
Once she’s been pricked, my minions bring me the overdress again, so I’m back to my full presence of sparkling black.
I do have a bit of a bone to pick with the way the waking-up scene plays out. In all the Sleeping Beauty stories I’ve seen, Carabosse is a force to be reckoned with, a dragon or a powerful enchantress.
In the ballet, they kind of cut to the chase. I stand guard over Aurora with my minions, but when the Prince arrives, the Lilac Fairy sort of waves her hands around, and I’m defeated.
Just like that.
Hollywood would never stand for such an anticlimax.
But this is classical ballet, and so when Angelique uses her paltry magic that couldn’t even break my terrible spell, I collapse to be carried out by the crow-like minions.
Being a villain isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At least not in the end.
As we approach the dress rehearsals and opening night, the intensity of the workout schedule definitely drops a notch. I guess they don’t want anyone injured right at the end. The understudies are working harder than we are.
I watch mine dance with Dominika in the spindle scene and admit to feeling some chagrin. She’s better than me by a long shot. She should probably have the role.
But the publicity for the tour is in full swing and I’m definitely a headliner. It’s nothing like a TV show. There’s no photographers stalking us or interviews. But I do end up on a Chicago station morning show and Dominika doesn’t. She never mentions it, but I feel the coolness of both her and the dancer playing the Prince in the final rehearsals.
Blitz takes care of sending tickets to Mindy and her family, since they probably shouldn’t come from me. He makes it look like they won them and includes a night stay in a hotel in case they can’t afford one.
I hold on to a set I plan to send to my parents. The Houston part of the tour is still many weeks away. We start here in Chicago, then move on to Boston, Baltimore, New York, and Miami. After Houston, there will still be Los Angeles and Seattle.
I’ve never been to most of these places, only LA. I hope we have time to see the cities. Blitz is coming along on the entire tour, and I’ve decided to break away from the company at that point to stay in places where we can ensure our security plus have our driver and support staff so I can have a little more freedom.
He and his parents will arrive the night before we open in Chicago. I can’t wait to see him. I know I look different, as I expected. More angular, muscular, and strong. I move like a ballerina all the time now, not just when I’m dancing. I’ve made a metamorphosis, like a butterfly from a cocoon.
I’m who I was always supposed to be.